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U.S. Buys Up All Satellite War Images
LONDON, Oct 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars to prevent Western media from seeing highly accurate civilian satellite pictures of the effects of bombing in Afghanistan,
The Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday.
The images, which are taken from Ikonos, an advanced civilian satellite launched in 1999, are better than spy satellite pictures available to the military during most of the Cold War, said the paper, adding that the extraordinary detail of the images already taken by the satellite includes a line of trainees marching between training camps at Jalalabad.
"At the same resolution, it would be possible to see bodies lying on the ground after last week's bombing attacks," said the
Guardian.
Under U.S. law, the U.S. defense department has legal power to exercise "shutter control" over civilian satellites launched from the U.S. in order to prevent enemies using the images while America is at war, said the paper.
But no order for shutter control was given, even after the bombing raids began 10 days ago.
The decision to shut down access to satellite images was taken last Thursday, after reports of heavy civilian casualties from overnight bombings of camps near Darunta, northwest of Jalalabad.
Instead of invoking legal powers, the Pentagon bought exclusive rights to all Ikonos satellite pictures of Afghanistan from Space Imaging, the company which runs the satellite. The agreement was made retroactive to the start of the bombing raids.
The U.S. military does not need the pictures for its own purposes because it already has six imaging satellites in orbit, augmented by a seventh launched last weekend.
Four of the satellites, called Keyholes, take photographic images estimated to be six to 10 times better than the one-meter resolution available from Ikonos.
U.S. intelligence specialists heavily criticized the decision to use commercial, rather than legal, powers to bar access to satellite images Tuesday.
Since images of bombed Afghan bases would not have shown the position of U.S. forces or compromised U.S. military security, the ban could have been challenged by news media as being a breach of the First Amendment, which guarantees press freedom.
"If they had imposed shutter control, it is entirely possible that news organizations would have filed a lawsuit against the government arguing prior restraint censorship," said John Pike, of Global Security, a U.S. website which publishes satellite images of military and alleged terrorist facilities around the world.
The only alternative source of accurate satellite images would be the Russian Cosmos system. But Russia has not yet decided to step into the information void created by the Pentagon deal with Space Imaging, the
Guardian said.
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